Assassin's Creed II PC gets a copy protection fix

Good news, PC gamers: losing your Internet connection while playing Assassin's Creed II won't force you to resume from the last save point, after all. As Shacknews reports, Ubisoft has released a patch for the PC version of its serial assassination simulator, just ahead of the port's March 16 North American release.

Available here at FileShack, the 18.6MB patch lets players resume "from the exact same point" if their Internet connection happens to drop mid-game.

That's the exact mechanism Ubisoft promised when announcing its new digital rights management scheme in January. However, reviewers found the release version of Assassin's Creed II PC booted players out and scrapped their progress when connection to Ubisoft's master servers was lost.

On the upside, this latest Ubisoft DRM does away with CD checks and installation limits, and it stores users' saved games "in the cloud." You just need to be online constantly when running the game. Ubisoft is being more draconian there than Valve, whose Steam distribution service includes an offline mode.